Restaurant and cafe table tops in Chase Cross

Yes. Chase Cross is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM5. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Havering. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. A table order comes off the van as a stack of frames and a pallet of bases, and both of those need somewhere to stand before either is moved. Empty frames go back on the van the same trip. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

Ceiling heights dropped after the war, so there is less wall between the worktop and the wall units than in anything older. Trade in this stock is a single shopfront with a small room behind it, so an order is a dozen pieces rather than fifty, and that changes what is worth doing rather than how it is done. Old floors fall away and the feet take it up. A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. None of that is scribed against on a table, since it stands clear of every wall, so the awkwardness moves from the back edge to the floor and the base. What the room does to the base matters more than the wall.

A height barrier on the car park entrance rules out a tail-lift van outright, and the stone then transfers to a trolley at the barrier itself. A table order is many small pieces rather than one long one, so the route decides how many trips the delivery takes rather than how big anything can be. A dozen pieces is a dozen carries, not one lift. Unrestricted does not mean empty, and a street that is clear at seven is usually full by nine. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. A suspension costs less than a lost fit-out morning.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation. That says something about the housing round here, not about the work. Quote, cut and fit are the same here as on any other part of the patch. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. Table work arrives as a batch by its nature, and a batch means one slab run rather than the same colour ordered twice a year apart. Sizes are frozen before machining rather than during it. Kitchens go in near the end of a conversion, behind the plastering and the flooring, by which point the programme has already absorbed whatever slipped earlier. A room opening in a second phase is worth naming now, while the material is still on the ground and a match is a telephone call. A second site is quoted from the same specification.

A galley closed at one end takes a short return across the top, and that little piece carries the same edge work, the same handling and nearly the same cost as a full length. A table top answers to none of that, since it meets no wall and needs no scribe, but the pieces come off the same slab as the counter and the colour has to carry across both. A circle wastes its corners, and the quote says so. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. A column, a boxed duct or a fixed bench in a dining room is designed around with a shape cut to suit rather than notched on site. A thin top over a wide plate wants a pad underneath. Bring in one base, or send the maker’s plate drawing, and tell us the table count including any spares you want to hold back. Where someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. A table top bolted to a base you already own is loose furniture rather than a fixture, so it leaves with the operator at the end of a term. Specified for the term, not for a decade by default.

A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. Walls at both ends mean two scribes on every piece, and a run that has to drop between two fixed points has no tolerance left to give away. What decides the cut list here is the seating plan rather than the room shape, and one repeated table size nests far better than six one-offs. Rectangles nest and rounds do not.

The fit follows 5 to 10 working days after the template, and nothing is cut before that visit because nothing is cut from a plan. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. Small, roughly square kitchens with a back door and a window in the middle of the run: short lengths, few joins, and a lot to work around. Table tops sit outside all of that, because a top touches no wall at all and every one of its edges is profiled, polished and on show. Wine, citrus and a bleach cloth decide the material.

If your own slab breaks there is no matching replacement to hand, and that is the real difference. How the slab has been stored is worth telling us, because stone kept flat is not stone off a rack. Thickness has to be known before quoting, since it decides the edge, the cut-outs and what the units carry. Studio and one-bed conversions put the whole kitchen against a single wall, so the job is one run and everything depends on that one length. Where an operator changes hands the bases usually stay, so a refit becomes a resurface and the saving comes from what is already bolted down. Held stock is worth more than a discount.

A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. Post-war terraces have a short straight hall to the kitchen, which is a good deal kinder than the houses they replaced. A whole slab still gets reserved, because a dozen matching tops is the entire point of ordering them together. What the unit was before decides what it needs now.